By Paul Laster
A second-generation abstract expressionist painter, Lynne Drexler studied with Hans Hofmann and Robert Motherwell in the 1950s before establishing a creative career with her first solo show in 1961 at the esteemed Tanager Gallery, an artist-run collective on East 10th Street in New York. Inspired by music and nature, she painted with a vibrant palette of swatch-like brushstrokes in condensed clusters. Marrying a fellow artist in 1962, she traveled the country while he taught and she painted, hung out at the artsy Cedar Tavern and lived in the bohemian Chelsea Hotel and a loft in SoHo before finally retreating to an island off Maine, where she lived like a hermit—forgotten by the greater art world—and continued to paint until her death in 1999.
Recently resurrected via million-dollar sales of her paintings at auction, Drexler is having her first solo show in New York in 38 years. Titled “The Last Decade,” this time it’s a doubleheader, with Mnuchin Gallery exhibiting works from 1959 to 1964 Uptown and Berry Campbell showing paintings from 1965 to 1969 in Chelsea. Contrasting clusters of organic, arc-shaped lines and dots with more geometrically modeled circles and rectangles, her canvases are kaleidoscopes of vivid colors and forms.